ARC Review: The Memory Trees by Kali Wallace

I received this book for free from HarperCollins in exchange for an honest review. 

Review by: Paige

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Publication: October 10, 2017

Note: This review is based off the ARC I received, I’m just a few days late in posting this review! The book has since been published.

Genre: Young Adult, Magical Realism

Synopsis: Sorrow Lovegood’s life has been shaped by the stories of the women who came before her: brave, resilient women who settled long ago on a mercurial apple orchard in Vermont. The land has been passed down through generations, and Sorrow and her family take pride in its strange history. Their offbeat habits may be ridiculed by other townspeople—especially their neighbors, the Abrams family—but for the first eight years of her life, the orchard is Sorrow’s whole world. 

Then one winter night everything changes. Sorrow’s sister Patience is tragically killed. Their mother suffers a mental breakdown. Sorrow is sent to live with her dad in Miami, away from the only home she’s ever known.

Now sixteen, Sorrow’s memories of her life in Vermont are maddeningly hazy; even the details of her sister’s death are unclear. She returns to the orchard for the summer, determined to learn more about her troubled childhood and the family she left eight years ago. Why has her mother kept her distance over the years? What actually happened the night Patience died? Is the orchard trying to tell her something, or is she just imagining things?

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ARC Review: When I Cast Your Shadow by Sarah Porter

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review by: Paige

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Publication: September 12th, 2017

Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal

Synopsis: A teenage girl calls her beloved older brother back from the grave with disastrous consequences.

Dashiell Bohnacker was hell on his family while he was alive. But it’s even worse now that he’s dead….

After her troubled older brother, Dashiell, dies of an overdose, sixteen-year-old Ruby is overcome by grief and longing. What she doesn’t know is that Dashiell’s ghost is using her nightly dreams of him as a way to possess her body and to persuade her twin brother, Everett, to submit to possession as well.

Dashiell tells Everett that he’s returned from the Land of the Dead to tie up loose ends, but he’s actually on the run from forces crueler and more powerful than anything the Bohnacker twins have ever imagined….

Important Update!

Hi everyone! Sorry for disappearing for a bit without warning, but I wanted to give you all some important updates on our lives. Meg and I have moved to college in just this past week, and are both going through all the craziness of orientation, registering for classes, and adjusting to our new lives. As a result, we’ve both taken an impromptu step back from this blog. Once we have more of an idea of our routines and schedules, I promise we’ll be back to normal (and if a hiatus is necessary for us again, we’ll update accordingly.) For now, please bear with us! We love running this blog and connecting with all of you. Sharing our love of books with others is such a great joy, and we cherish the opportunities that we have. Thank you all for understanding, and if you wanna keep up to date with us, you can find all our personal social media in our links tab!

ARC Review: The Devils You Know by M.C. Atwood

I received this book for free from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. 

Review by: Paige

Publication: October 3rd, 2017

Genre: Young Adult, Horror

Synopsis: Plenty of legends surround the infamous Boulder House in Whispering Bluffs, Wisconsin, but nobody takes them seriously. Certainly nobody believes that the original owner, Maxwell Cartwright Jr., cursed its construction—or that a murder of crows died upon its completion, their carcasses turning the land black. If anyone did believe it all, there’s no way River Red High would offer a field trip there for the senior class.

Five very different seniors on the trip—Violet, Paul, Ashley, Dylan, and Gretchen—have reasons beyond school spirit for not ditching the trip. When they’re separated from the group, they discover that what lies within Boulder House is far more horrifying than any local folklore. To survive, they’ll have to band together in ways they never could have imagined and ultimately confront the truths of their darkest selves.

Discussion: The Intersection of Sexuality and Villainy

Hi everyone! I’ve been thinking about starting some discussion posts for a while, and decided to start off with a topic that’s been on my mind for years. As we continue to push for diverse books, it’s always important to recognize the good, the bad, and the ugly, so that we can continue to improve and progress. In this case, I want to start off talking about sexuality and its direct or indirect relation to a character’s villainy.

The Seven Deadly Sins Book Tag

Book Tag Sunday has now officially lasted two weeks straight, which is a record for us. I saw Sara at The Book Cycle had done this tag, and Meg and I are obsessed with anything related to the Seven Deadly Sins, so we thought this would be the perfect fit!

First Lines Fridays #1

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

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“There are two things you know. One: You were there. Two: You couldn’t have been there.

Holding these two incompatible truths together takes skill at juggling. Of course juggling requires a third ball to keep the rhythm smooth. That third ball is time – which bounces much more wildly than any of us would like to believe.”

Waiting on Wednesday #2: Warcross by Marie Lu

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine which spotlights upcoming releases that book bloggers are eagerly anticipating.

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This week’s Waiting on Wednesday goes to Warcross by Marie Lu! Obviously, pretty much every book blogger is looking forward to this release. We’re both huge fans of Lu’s past series’, and cannot wait to see what she has in store this time. It’s sure to be just as engrossing as it is heartbreaking, exhilarating as it is empathetic. The concept sounds incredibly complex, but Lu sure has the writing chops to match it! This book could not get here any sooner.

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Publication Date: September 12th, 2017

Synopsis: From #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu—when a game called Warcross takes the world by storm, one girl hacks her way into its dangerous depths.

For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn’t just a game—it’s a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. Needing to make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships—only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.

Convinced she’s going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game’s creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year’s tournament in order to uncover a security problem . . . and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika’s whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she’s only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire.

In this sci-fi thriller, #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu conjures an immersive, exhilarating world where choosing who to trust may be the biggest gamble of all.

Goodreads Book Tag!

Welcome to Book Tag Sunday! Every Sunday, we’re hoping to do a new book tag for all of you. To kick it off, we’ve decided to do the Goodreads Book Tag, which we found from Life of a Literary Nerd! Goodreads is truly such an invaluable source. It’s an organizational tool, but also helps us get involved in the community by seeing what people are reading and whether they love or hate it. So without further ado, let’s see what’s coming up for us!

ARC Review: The Goblins of Bellwater by Molly Ringle

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Review by: Paige

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Publication: October 1st, 2017

Genre: New Adult, Magical Realism, Urban Fantasy

Synopsis: Most people have no idea goblins live in the woods around the small town of Bellwater, Washington. But some are about to find out. 

Skye, a young barista and artist, falls victim to a goblin curse in the forest one winter night, rendering her depressed and silenced, unable to speak of what happened. Her older sister, Livy, is at wit’s end trying to understand what’s wrong with her. Local mechanic Kit would know, but he doesn’t talk of such things: he’s the human liaison for the goblin tribe, a job he keeps secret and never wanted, thrust on him by an ancient family contract.

Unaware of what’s happened to Skye, Kit starts dating Livy, trying to keep it casual to protect her from the attention of the goblins. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kit, Skye draws his cousin Grady into the spell through an enchanted kiss in the woods, dooming Grady and Skye both to become goblins and disappear from humankind forever.

It’s a midwinter night’s enchantment as Livy, the only one untainted by a spell, sets out to save them on a dangerous magical path of her own.